Take Us There

"A cross-country journey that explores the relationship between meaningful
spaces, and the people and memories connected to them."

I haven't been to many art shows. I've perused through the Getty a couple of times, and ventured through the tar pits to get to MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art). I even worked as a slave in the backroom of MOLAA (The Museum of Latin American Art) licking envelopes till my tongue bled. But an art show was way different from any of these museums that I had been to. First off, none of the artists featured were dead white guys with names that even the most skilled linguist couldn't pronounce. They were physically present walking and talking vessels of creativity. They sought anyone willing to listen to them explain their work.

Upon entering the venue itself and it looks like the inside of a Hookah bar. Echo Curio isn’t far from that. It’s a swanky hipster place. People don thick rimmed black glasses, pulling their vests tighter over their over sized white v-necks as a cold wind rushes down La Cienega Blvd forcing them off the sidewalk and further into the doorway of the exhibit. A rainbow of religious candles flicker on the cement as the sudden rush of bodies stirs the air around them. Ribbons attached to shiny black fencing on the windows flutter at the sudden rush of movement. They’re covered in words like “hope”, “peace”, “Obama”. One has to maneuver through the endless crowd of skinny jeans and high-waisted skirts chatting about their various off the wall professions and majors as they write their own messages on the ribbons.

“I have a radio show. I only play underground stuff, maybe you’ve heard of it?”

She pushes her glasses higher up on her nose.

“I’m an art and media studies major, minoring in film. I want to do mostly documentaries.”

He unbuttons his pin-striped vest to adjust his scarf still holding a permanent marker.

A young woman holds a furry ball against her shoulder, its face covered by her short brown hair that falls just above her shoulders. The creature nestles its way through her hair, parting it to peek out.

It’s a possum.

She flips her hair back, bringing the possum to her other shoulder as she answers questions from the small crowd gathered around her.

“What do you feed it?”

“Carnivore food. You can buy it from a feed store.”

“They have those in L.A.?”

“Yeah,” she says as she turns away.

“Do you have other possums?”

She turns around slowly, surprised the same guy is asking her another question.

“Just one other…” she pauses, “It’s her sister. She isn’t as used to being held around people as this one is. I found them outside and didn’t see any sign of the mother so I decided to take care of them myself. One’s an inside possum, and one’s an outside. This one’s the outside. One time, her sister got out and I went outside and I was calling for it every night. You know the Moms, they make a hissing sound that sounds like ‘Cheeee Cheee’, almost like a hissing.”

A woman petting the possum stops to grit her teeth in an attempt to imitate her.

“Chish Chish”

“It’s more of a ‘Che che’ sound you know?” and she turns away seemingly taking my friend Andy's curiosity as him making fun of her.

We pulled away from their little circle to discuss what we just saw amongst ourselves. The woman lifts her arm to bring the scrambling possum to her other shoulder, giving us a glimpse of her armpit hair. It was smooth and a lighter brown color than that of her hair, about a couple inches or so long. It looked like she had a troll doll under her arm.

She sees us staring at the possum and mistakes it for staring at her, and she quickly returns her arm to its original position.

The crowd inside is just as interesting as the crowd outside, only difference is these people are discussing the various art pieces that hang on walls, dangle from ceilings, and even grow from the concrete floor below them. Inside the walls are painted over in glossy primary colors. DJ and exhibit to your left, over priced gift shop on the right, middle room with photos and booze straight on till morning.

The walls are covered with photographs: photographs with people they met, some of empty highways, bridges, and fast food restaurant logos. Some are printed on canvas, others are Polaroids all capturing the essence of different spaces. Various art pieces are nestled in between them, composed of what most would deem to be road trash: soda cans, glass bottles, old tires, and cigarette butts.

The concept of the exhibit itself was really quite simple. A space can mean a variety of things for different people. Places people go often have a series of memories attached to them. Certain spaces are built with specific intended functions. This brings up the questions, how does one truly define a space? I personally believe that a space is defined not by its intended function upon its construction, but by the way in which is it is occupied. The park by my house, for example, was erected so that children of the Boeing families who moved into our neighborhood way back in the 1940's could have a safe public place to play. While that was its intended purpose, it is now the site for various drug exchanges and gang encounters and that is what now defines this space.

What the artists here was go on a cross country road trip with the sole purpose of capturing these places in various forms of media. They wanted to represent these places as more than just push pins on a map.



The concept of capturing places through sound recordings was another concept used by the artists. In the middle room, there were a series of black boxes with holes cut out on one side, dangling from the ceiling.

"Put your head inside one of them. It's cool you can hear stuff," says one of the observers as he sips his wine out of a plastic cup.

Andy puts his head inside.

"WOAH you have to try this. It's like you're somewhere completely different and you can't hear anybody talking here or anything!"

"Those are sound recordings we took on the road. Kind of a way to put people here where we were," says the man still sipping the wine.

Recordings weren't the only form of sounds present at this exhibit. Andy is quite the music buff. His friends all play in the Long Beach band Mulatto. I had seen them so many times in high school but never took the time to appreciate the seniors who were making it impossible to do my math homework during lunch. A white guy on a trumpet would interrupt the buzz of high school kids as a kid in dreads on bass would follow up shaking his hair as he played along. A lot of the people at the exhibit were old Poly almuni ranging from the 90's to the decade we are in now. Many of them music buffs as well, remembering Andy from jazz band. We were introduced to a young woman who told us she was a composer and would be performing a piece as part of the exhibit. She gave Andy a copy of her sheet music, which he cradled in his hands the entire night. She bid us goodbye and headed to the center of the front room.

Andy read the sheet music, and I peeked over his shoulder. I can't read music to save my life, but I know there was something different about this sheet of music. There were notes sprinkled sparingly throughout the page. She had scribbled "happy birthday" and "high school fight song" softly in pencil underneath the horizontal lines where the notes were supposed to be. Andy and I stared at it confused until she began to explain the piece.

"What we are going to perform is a participation piece. So that means we need everybody's help in here!"

She begins the count the music for everyone, and the guy next to her with curly dreads begins to sing "Happy Birthday". Andy taps his foot keeping time with her as she turns her hand over with each passing note. She pauses and begins singing a song that nobody knows. Confused, we look down at the music and see "song that reminds you of someone you once loved" scribbled. People around us are peering over our shoulders to see what comes next. She's singing Whitney Houston. A woman next to us starts singing a Beatles song.

She begins to chant, "RABBITS IN THE FRONT LET ME HEAR YOU GRUNT UHH! RABBITS IN THE BACK SHOW ME WHERE IT'S AT RIGHT HERE! RABBITS IN THE STANDS GET UP AND CLAP YOUR HANDS LIKE THIS!" clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap. The next measure reads "high school fight song". She begins the chant again while voices within the crowd well up with excitement as they sing along with her. You can feel the nostalgia. More than half of the crowd is singing this song. Poly grads from all different eras are singing the song that defined their high school years. The song that played during every sporting event. Her singing slows, finally coming to a stop with a couple more taps from Andy's foot. She and her companions take a bow, and step outside, and the buzz of the crowd starts again as they start meandering to look at the art pieces the performers had blocked during their performance.

Many of the people they met along the road were interviewed, and asked to show them their favorite spaces and talk about what it meant to them. There was a picture of a young girl named Ella Jane standing on a rock in the middle of trees. The caption read "Ella Jane created a clearing in the backyard. Her space was known as the fort. It was a space where she could observe nature, and have some quiet time away from the Wii."


Herman Melville once said, "It's not down in any map, true places never are." This certainly can be said of Ella's space, as well as the many other special spaces the artists captured.



-Kristen Viray December 28th, 2009